A prison hulk

TheGenealogist.co.uk has enlarged its Court & Criminal Records collection so that even more black sheep ancestors can now be searched for and found on the site. With the new release of records you can unearth all sorts of ancestors who came up against the law – whether they were a victim, acquitted, convicted of a minor offence or found guilty of a major crime such as murder.

These fully searchable records cover series HO77 – The Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales and ADM 6 – The Registers of Convicts in Prison Hulks Cumberland, Dolphin and Ganymede with indexes from The National Archives.

Uniquely this release allows you the ability to search for victims of the crime (more than 132,000 of them). You can also hunt for people using their name or alias, or look for an offence, and see images of the pages from the books and registers that reveal even more fascinating information about the individual.

As these records cover a vast range of transgressions we are able to find men and women who stole small items such as shirts, potatoes, boots etc. We can also discover people who had married bigamously, forged money, uttered a counterfeit halfcrown, burgled, murdered or were accused of many more other crimes. One example of a number of unusual offences found in TheGenealogist’s new release, is that of Christian Crane, tried in February 1811 – ‘Being a person of evil fame and a reputed thief ’ he was adjudged to be ‘a rogue and vagabond’.

These records, joining those already available within TheGenealogist’s Court & Criminal collection, will reveal the sentence of the court handed out to our ancestors. Judgements can be seen to vary massively from a fine, a short imprisonment in Newgate, a public whipping, a longer spell inside, or the ultimate sanction of death.

Other ancestors were sentenced to be ‘transported beyond the seas’ and TheGenealogist already has many registers of convicts sent to Australia between 1787 and 1867. Joining them in this new release are the ADM 6 records for convicts who were waiting to begin their voyage to the penal colonies in Australia and were locked up on a number of prison hulks.

You can search for your lawless ancestor at www.thegenealogist.co.uk and to learn more see www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2017/criminal-recordsdiscover-black-sheep-ancestors-621/.

650,000 more Nottinghamshire records go online

TheGenealogist has extended its UK Parish Records collection with a new and exclusive release of 650,000 parish records for Nottinghamshire. These records can be used to find your ancestors’ baptisms, marriages and burials in these fully searchable records that cover parishes from this important East Midland county of England. With records that reach back to 1633, this release includes the records of 56 parishes from Awsworth to Woodborough, including 369,100 individuals in Baptisms, 168,000 individuals in Marriages and 112,800 individuals in Burials.

You can use these transcripts to find the names of ancestors, parents’ forenames (in the case of baptisms), father’s occupation (where noted), abode or parish, parish that the event took place in, the date of the event, and in the case of marriage records the bride’s maiden name and the witnesses’ names.

Amongst the notable Nottinghamshire people that can be found in these records are the infamous Lord Byron and his brilliant mathematician daughter Ada, Countess of Lovelace. Both are buried in the parish of Hucknal Torkard. As well as nobility, in this collection we also come across the baptism of Amos Hind. He was famous for playing First Class Cricket for the neighbouring county of Derbyshire between 1876 and 1877.

These additions bring our Nottinghamshire parish record collection to over 919,800 records. To search these records and many more see TheGenealogist.co.uk.